Zion Hill Bushcare Group

Location

Seaway from Toombul, Shultz Canal, alias
Kedron Brook, becomes tidal and the mangroves start. The bit of linear
park between Toombul and Hedley Avenue with its new official name -
Zion Hill Park - is part of the terrain under the eye of a re-vamped
bushcare group.

If you walk east from Toombul down the bike
path, it passes a cow and rusty car paddock just south of the end
of Hedley Street. Just up this street next to the
historic Nundah Cemetery is where the main activities of the new
group are building on the previous work of the Nundah Cemetery Bushland
project. (UBD Ref. 140 Q3)

History

Aboriginal heritage

It is easy to believe this was once an
important trading and meeting place of the Undumbi, part of the Gubi
Gubi nation and probably others as well because you can row a canoe (or
motor a boat) up Shultz Canal at high tide. Some time in the future the
Zion Hill Bushcare Group hope to do a bush tucker planting to
acknowledge the custodians of this place.

European history

The park surrounding the cemetery, part of
the Albert Bishop Park, is called German Mission Park as this was also
the site of the first free white settlement in Queensland - with the
establishment of the German Mission for Indigenous peoples. A short
tributary, its name awaiting retrieval, little more than a series of
water holes, flows along the back of the cemetery into Shultz Canal.
Maybe it was the seminal place for introduction of weeds to Queensland,
(and they remain vigorous still) but more importantly, it contains a
remnant stand of Melaleuca, (Melaleuca quinquenervia) one of the
last in the Kedron Brook catchment.

The challenges

By the early 1990s, this patch was “pretty
horrific” recalls Kharyl Scott. It was overgrown with huge Camphor
Laurels and Mile-a-Minute. In March 1992, she prepared a submission to
the Brisbane City Council to regenerate the bushland in the cemetery
locale and called on others to “Take Time to put a little back into
Your Community”. The Council first cleaned out the
tributary and cut down the Camphor Laurels. With considerable
community building skills at her disposal, Kharyl managed to
orchestrate a large group of diverse people to come together for a big
planting along the edge of the tributary and its waterholes.

A core group continued to weed and water,
tending the trees. People with property adjoining or nearby to the park
took on a proprietary interest. Unfortunately with school holidays
soon after the planting, a lot of trees were ripped out. A second big
planting, after the summer holidays, with the schools involved (the
Council having bought in a post-hole digger) saw over 350 trees planted.

This time, the Council bulldozers moved in
to drain the tributary and destroyed a lot of the plantings. Undaunted
the group continued to tend. Occasionally a fire truck would turn up
when Daryl Smith from the local Fire Brigade came down to do some
weeding. Seed taken from the area was propagated by Council. In 1993
Patricia Vaughan, then Alderman for Eagle Farm predicted that in ten
years time the place would be “a cool, pleasant, leafy area which is
attractive to wildlife”.

The
achievements

When we walk the park now, we can see Blue
Wrens; Red breasted Wrens and the usual Butcherbirds, Magpies,
Stormbirds and parrots. We get Red-bellied Black and Green Tree snakes,
Water Dragons and more. We need the buffer the vegetation provides more
than ever. It is the Kookaburra that seems to echo, for me, what the
energy of the place can be. The first group climbed trees and put up
nesting boxes for the possums.

When the initial enthusiasm of the Cemetery
Bushland Group started to wane - Nundah had a large population of
elderly people - Brisbane City Council took a more active role in
organising plantings. In about 1996 at least thirty locals turned up to
plant. Council contractors maintained the site and, after a second
community planting about two years ago, also did some plantings.

And so the seeds of the current Zion Hill
Bushcare Group were sown and, through word of mouth, mostly with
conversations in the park itself while out walking the dog, a core of
dedicated bushcare volunteers have formed a group and are planting and
weeding. The Nundah Community Centre network had an input in our third
gathering and will extend the group. The task is potentially
overwhelming, given the weeds, but with the experienced input of
Council workers and Kharyl Scott, among others, we plan to focus area
by area on confinable parts. We have grand visions, of course, and hope
to see joint plantings with the Nundah Reconciliation Group, Greening
Australia, Men of the Trees and the local schools and you, too, if you
have a spare moment or two.

Group Contact

Usually revegetation activities are
held on the first Saturday of the month, 8:30 to 10:30 am, at German
Station Park, Hedley Av., Nundah. Location at UBD Ref. Map 140 Q2 - R3